Tag End of Year

Finding Joy

Michael 12 Comments

If this year was a horse race, we’d be coming down the stretch, nearing the finish! There’s not even a full week of 2022 left, 6 days – and that’s counting today! Plenty of time to bask in the glow of a year well lived. Unless you haven’t. What about those who didn’t live as well as they hoped? Those whose 2022 left much more to be desired that can be had in 20% of December’s allotment of days. What are we to do?

Oh dear. Now I’ve gone and done it. I’ve alluded to myself being one of the unfulfilled. Well, let me come right out and say it, this has not been my year. But maybe there is time to turn that around.

I heard something this weekend or maybe read it somewhere. The weekend was a busy one..

The world gives us sorrow. It’s up to us to find the joy.

I think that means we are responsible for our happiness, but I don’t believe we are solely responsible for it. It means nobody can make us enjoy life but even though it might seem others may throw up roadblocks, even those who are usually on our sides, they aren’t inherently against us and we should never let others into our lives. But if we rely solely on someone else to bring us joy or happiness we will never experience it because we will always be living somebody’s definition of happiness rather than our own. The best we can hope for from life is honesty from those who mean the most to us, and their love and support to be the person we are. It isn’t that the world gives us sorrow. It’s that it isn’t the world’s job to make us happy. Happiness is out there and we take what the world gives us and make it something joyful.

I don’t know. It sounded better in my head when I was thinking it but you get the idea. Do what you need to do to be happy and don’t rely on anybody else because what brings you joy is in you already. You just have to find it. (Likewise we can never hope to please everyone all of time because we can’t bring them joy, we only add to their experiences.)

This year hasn’t been my year. They have been bad times but good ones too. Did the bad ones outweigh the positives? Or were those the times I let the world try to make me happy, tried making others responsible for my good feelings, or didn’t put in the work to see what about whatever was going on that was good and positive and use that to work up some happiness for myself? I’m not so sure the world brings us sorrow but I do believe it is up to us to find the joy.

Hmm. Six days. I should start looking!

The winter months are packed with religious and secular holidays, all defying definition. It is when we remember something special shared with special people at a special time. Read more and explore winter’s special times with us in “A Winter Carol” at ROAMcare.org.

RRSB Persons of the Year

Michael 7 Comments

Nearing the end of the year most everybody will be writing about the year in review (ugh) or resolutions (still ugh but perhaps not disgustingly so). I, because I am me, will embark on my own end of year tangent and instead, celebrate the RRSB First (and Likely Only) Persons of the Year Award.  Yes, you read that correctly – plural “Persons,” singular “Award.” My choice for outstanding individual of 2021 is two individuals.

After careless considerat…  err, careful consideration, I’ve concluded there are two people worthy enough to be the Person of the Year, umm Persons of the Year and they is, I mean are: (drum roll, fanfare, etc, etc), Washington’s newest power couple, Liz Chaney and Joe Manchin.

Yes, that is a match made in Purgatory but they, and as far as I can tell, they alone are the epitome of Representative of the People. There are 535 elected voting representatives in Washington, 100 Senators, 435 members of the House of Representatives. Of those 535 people, 533 are more comfortable voting however their party tells them rather than those who hired them for the job. Only Chaney and Manchin have to the point of loss of standing and threats of censure, voted as they felt best benefited their constituents rather than their party leaders.

Seriously, as we enter 2022 maybe our Congress needs to resolve to improve themselves and the first step is for all 535 of them to write 100 times “I represent the people who voted for me” on any handy blackboard. Then they can rip out the aisles running down the middle of each chamber in that big white building on the hill and rather than assigning seats by party, get all the representatives of each state to sit together like they did when Congress was a new idea back in 1700s. Committee assignments will be made by members’ ability and background and leadership positions will limited to those identified in the Constitution. Yeah, that’s a bunch of pipedreams but they make just as realistic set of resolutions as wanting to lose weight and exercise more, but a guy can dream.

Now, getting back to Joe and Liz, my Persons of the Year. I agree it’s a sad state of affairs when politicians are singled out for bucking the system but face it, if your reps are always voting however their party leader tells them, why are they there. Let’s eliminate 531 positions and leave just one Democrat and one Republican in each house and they can vote on everything by rock, paper, scissors. Makes as much sense as what they’ve gotten done this year their way.

Manchin-Chaney